


Housekeeping

by mad_martha



Series: Two Households [15]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossdressing, Domestic, F/M, Family Drama, M/M, Mild Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2569844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry really should have paid more attention when he was signing all that paperwork.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Housekeeping

**Author's Note:**

> This is set some time after [Taking Care Of Ron Weasley](http://archiveofourown.org/works/213454) and I don't think it's going to have much of a plot; just a bit of catching up with the boys. _Taking Care Of Ron Weasley_ was meant to be a much longer story about Harry and Ron living together, but it never really developed because the storyline I was working on, although interesting and quite exciting for me to write, had an edge to the Weasley family dynamics that I discovered I wasn't comfortable with. So let's just skip forward a couple of years and assume they all got over it *shifty eyes*
> 
> Acknowledgements: Kerryblaze, for organising the HP fandom reunion; and Shocolate, for organising the Harry/Ron part.
> 
> Written for the Harry/Ron Reunion part of the Harry Potter Fandom LiveJournal Reunion (Autumn 2014).

"We need a bigger bathtub," Harry said, setting a mug of hot tea carefully on the closed lid of the toilet. "Careful you don't knock that over."

"Ta," Ron said, with a sigh of gratitude, and he did indeed have to be very careful stretching his hand out to retrieve it. Actually, it was less of a stretch and more of an awkward elbow-crooking manoeuvre. "I expanded the bath before I got in."

"Then we need a bigger bathroom too." Harry was eyeing his partner's knobbly feet which were sticking up over the end of the tub. There was maybe enough room between his big toe and the wall to squeeze a sheet of parchment; the days when they could share the tub comfortably were long gone, if, indeed, they had ever really existed. But Ron had shot up a few more inches since they left school, and even Harry was taller than he had been.

"I don't reckon the landlady would take it too well if we tried moving the walls around in here," Ron commented.

"I wasn't really thinking of that. Besides, that bath is getting a bit pissy about being resized all the time. It popped a leak on me the other night."

Ron shifted uneasily under his layer of bubbles. "We could talk to Mrs. Mudgeonly, I s'pose. Ask her if she could replace it."

Mrs. Mudgeonly was their landlady, and their relationship with her had been a bit uneasy ever since they'd had to renegotiate their tenancy agreement in the early days, due to needing more aggressive wards than most people. It wasn't just the whole "enemies of dark wizards" thing – although that didn't help – but also overzealous journalists, and Fred and George's alleged sense of humour which had led to some antisocial pranks that had offended the neighbours. Stronger wards had been the only solution, and Mrs. Mudgeonly had wanted to put their rent up by a considerable percentage, to "pay for the work", even though the new wards had been installed entirely by Harry, Ron and Remus Lupin. The dispute that followed had involved a number of people Harry would much rather _not_ have got involved, and had generally been rather uncomfortable for the two for them.

"We could," Harry agreed now, although he doubted such a request would go well. He took a seat on the edge of the bathtub, cradling his own mug in his hands. "Or I was thinking …"

"Yeah?" Ron blinked up at him. He looked tired, but that was nothing unusual; he worked hard at the Ministry, and took on a lot of overtime for the sake of the money, but he also spent almost all of his free time studying in the hope of passing the St. Mungo's entrance exam at the end of the summer. And if he succeeded in that, he was probably going to be even more tired for some time to come, although at least he would finally be doing what he really wanted to do: training to be a healer.

"Well … maybe we should think about finding somewhere a bit bigger."

There was silence as Ron digested this, which didn't surprise Harry at all. Ron was a homebody at heart; he'd been more than happy to get this place with Harry when they were eighteen, but having got comfortable he was unlikely to be in a hurry to put himself to the bother of finding somewhere else. It was entirely possible that, in some unexamined corner of his mind, he expected to live in the flat until he retired.

Harry saw things a little differently. Having had a less stable childhood than Ron, his ideas of what a 'home' was were somewhat more nebulous, and he didn't easily become attached to places. The flat had had a purpose when they moved in, which for him was primarily independence from their respective families and the freedom to live as they pleased. He'd never seen it as more than a temporary arrangement.

"But we like it here, don't we?" Ron said cautiously.

"Well, yeah. But we've been here for a couple of years, after all, and - " Harry stretched out one leg and rested his socked foot on the wall next to the bathroom door. It wasn't a stretch at all; his knee was still mostly bent. "It's getting a bit small, don't you think? It wasn't a big problem when we moved in, but we've got more stuff now and we're knocking into each other all the time. And if more than one person visits at a time, the living room gets pretty cramped."

"I like knocking into you." Ron grinned at him, but Harry could see the doubt and unease just underneath it. "Besides, the rent's bound to be more on a bigger place."

"Yeah, I suppose so." And Harry heard the unspoken part of that objection; that Ron probably wouldn't be able to pay more on his share. He certainly wouldn't be able to pay more if he started an apprenticeship in the autumn; they'd gone over those figures already and the stipend from St. Mungo's would be half of his current take-home pay for the first year. "Well, it was just a thought." He drained his mug, and held out his hand. "Finished with yours? I'm going to wash up and put the cat out."

This was a long-standing joke between them. Rosebud was a kneazle, not a cat, and she came and went exactly as she pleased. Any attempt to "put her out" would be futile at best, and liable to put her out in an entirely different way, one which might even result in a clawing.

Harry pondered the situation as he washed the two mugs and their supper dishes in the tiny cubicle of a kitchen. Money wasn't really an issue in his eyes; his allowance from the trustees of his family's estate had been adequate when they first took on the flat, and had increased substantially each year since his seventeenth birthday. He wouldn't inherit everything until he was twenty-five, but in many ways that was irrelevant because from a financial point of view he was already comfortably independent, and in just over a year's time he would be able to negotiate new terms for his allowance if necessary, as well as taking possession of his family home, the Rose House.

And there was the sticking point. Harry already possessed a sizeable home of his own; he just wasn't allowed to live in it yet. Besides, had you asked him, back when he and Ron first decided to rent the flat together, he would have said quite categorically that he had no earthly use for a house as big as the Rose House. It was a beautifully furnished little mansion, and having spent over three months rattling around in it during his illness when he was seventeen, he hadn't been able to imagine living there full-time, even with Ron to keep him company. A tiny one-bedroomed flat had been much more their thing.

Two years had made a big difference. While Ron was working at the Ministry and on realising his goal of training to be a healer, Harry had been apprenticed in a different way: as an Animator, under Professor Flitwick. This was an apprenticeship of the old-fashioned kind, which had mostly fallen into obsolescence in wizarding Britain. It was an apprenticeship into a discipline rather than a profession, and, it had to be said, had always been largely an upper-class, First Families thing anyway. The idea initially hadn't appealed to Harry for that very reason, but given that upon leaving school his health had been poor, his employment prospects low, and his need for paid employment actually non-existent, fostering the natural and very rare ability he possessed had come to seem like a practical thing to do.

Initially his studies had taken place at Hogwarts, and had been fitted in around the constraints of his physical strength. But Harry was in good health these days and he wasn't a novice anymore, and increasingly his studies and projects were taking up more space and resources than he possessed. At the moment he was making use of a workroom at his godfather Sirius's house, but for a number of reasons this was becoming undesirable –

Well. Two reasons, really, named Venus and Orion, each of them being two years old and growing more inquisitive and obstreperous with every passing day. Harry preferred not to associate with small children more than he absolutely had to, especially the kind of small children who found him utterly fascinating and refused to leave him alone. That made working at Black Manor awkward.

And that had led to Harry to think about alternatives, and as the Rose House possessed several well-appointed magical workrooms, it was the obvious choice. It was just unfortunate under the circumstances, and rather annoying, that he had slightly more than a year to wait before he could use them.

Especially as he and Ron were currently living in a teapot-sized flat, with a bathtub that kept springing a leak every time one of them magicked it to fit a grown man, and a landlady who had a strange objection to adequate domestic warding. And shortly Ron was going to struggle to pay what he considered to be his fair share of the household expenses. Money might not be an issue for Harry, but it was most definitely one for Ron, and an issue that Harry had to manoeuvre around very carefully to avoid hurting his lover's feelings. It was terribly unfair to put Ron in a position where he felt he had to pay even more just to get a bigger, less leaky bathtub, when the Rose House had bathtubs galore and was effectively _rent free_.

In fact, in one sense there were no household expenses at all, as the housekeeping came out of an entirely different part of the Potter Estate's budget. (Well, of course that was very far from being the actual situation, given that the whole budget belonged to Harry, but Harry himself still had a great deal of difficulty seeing the vast Potter Estate as being _his;_ somewhere in the shadowy, uneasy parts of his hind-brain, he clung on to the notion that it all still belonged to his father or grandfather, from whom he was receiving alarmingly generous amounts of pocket-money.)

But there was no point in being grumpy about it. A year was, after all, just a year, and they would just have to manage somehow until then. There were worse things in life than bathtubs that were a bit short, and leaks could always be repaired.

He wasn't the only one thinking about the situation, though. The lamps were doused, the only sound to be heard was a dog barking a street or two away, and Harry was tucked into the warmth of his partner's body, very nearly asleep, when suddenly Ron said quietly: "It'd be nice to have a place where we could do our own laundry. That laundrette down the road is getting a bit scabby and half the machines were out of order last week. And the dryer scorched my underpants again; that's twice now."

Harry had to agree that having reliably unscorched underpants was certainly a consideration.

xXx

It was an odd thing, but having made the vague decision to maybe look into the possibility of perhaps finding a new flat at some point, the issue almost immediately became more annoying and more pressing than either of them had bargained for.

Harry arrived home a few days later, toting a backpack full of Animation textbooks and a string bag containing vegetables and chops for their dinner, to find a note stuffed into their owlbox from the neighbour in the flat below theirs. This turned out to be an aggrieved warning that the neighbour in question would be speaking to Mrs. Mudgeonly about their propensity for letting their bathtub overflow. The water had seeped through the floorboards into his bedroom that morning and ruined his mattress, and this was not the first time either.

Harry frowned at this. As far as he knew, they'd both been out all day, so how could the bathtub have overflowed? And it was certainly the first time he'd heard that anything of the sort had happened. He jogged up the stairs, let himself into the flat, dumped his burdens on the sofa, and went to look.

As he'd expected, there was no sign that Ron had been back to the flat all day. The bathroom was just as they'd left it, the tub empty and the floor dry. Shaking his head, Harry went to put the groceries away, and he was occupied with this when the Floo in the living room chimed and there was the rattling whoosh of someone with privileged access arriving in the grate. Only a handful of people had that kind of access.

"Ron? Harry? Are you home?"

"Yeah, I'm here," Harry said, sticking his head out of the kitchen. Hermione Grainger was standing on the hearthrug. "Only just got in, though. What's up?"

"I saw Charlie yesterday and he asked me to give Ron a parcel." She held up a square packet wrapped in brown paper and string. "I only got home this morning, though. Is he about?"

"Not home from work yet. Want to wait? I'm making a cuppa."

"All right then. Thank you." She leaned against the kitchen doorpost and watched as he put the kettle on the hob. "Are you both all right? I haven't seen you for weeks."

"Busy," Harry said, with a shrug. "Ron's knackered, of course."

"He works hard. You both do."

"Bit different for me," Harry said, although he was busier than he knew most people gave him credit for. He didn't do Animation all the time; a certain proportion of his time was spent with his trustee, Mr. Pettifer, who was teaching him his responsibilities as the head of a First Family in anticipation of the day when he would take up his seat in the Wizengamot. Harry had no idea how other heirs of First Families were prepared for this, but it seemed to involve an awful lot of work for him.

"That doesn't mean you don't work hard." Hermione gave him a curious look. "Are you sure you want me to have tea with you?"

Harry stared at her. "You know me, Grainger. Would I have asked if I didn't?"

She looked amused. "No, but you look a bit cross. I can go – "

"Oh – no, it's not you. I had a note from the bloke in the flat downstairs when I got home. He says our bath keeps overflowing into his bedroom, and I know there's a bit of a leak in it sometimes, but he says it did it today and we haven't even been here. I can't work out where the water's coming from, if it's not our tub."

"Odd! But it might not be the bath at all. Maybe one of the water pipes has a leak?"

"It seems pretty dry in there," Harry said. "Take a look."

"It probably would, if the pipes are under the floorboards."

One of the things about Hermione that Harry had always been able to appreciate was her practicality. The tea was forgotten as they went to investigate.

"How am I going to find it, if it is one of the pipes?" he asked her, flipping the light on in the bathroom.

"Honestly? I don't know. But there might be something visible that you missed." Hermione squeezed in beside him. "Your bathroom is awfully small."

"Tell me about it."

They crouched down with difficulty and peered under the bathtub.

"I can't see any damp patches. But sometimes it's just easier to …" Hermione reached one hand underneath and patted around. "No, it's all bone dry under here, even around the pipes." She sat back on her heels with a frown. "Does your loo always make that noise?"

There was a constant hissing from the tank which, now Harry came to think of it, it had been doing for several days. "I don't think so."

"It sounds like it's refilling. Have you flushed it recently?"

"Not since I got home." Harry stood up and reached around Hermione with difficulty to take the lid off the tank. "Huh. It's half-empty."

"And it's not getting any fuller," she commented, when she'd taken a look. "Can you stand back a bit, Harry? If I can reach around here …" She touched the wall tiles directly under the tank. "Aha!" She held up her hand and her fingertips were wet. "That's not condensation, there's a little stream running down the wall!"

Harry risked a severe crick in his neck, trying to reach behind the toilet with his lit wand to see what was there, but there was dust, mildew … and a glistening streak running down the wall beneath the tank and disappearing through the crack between the floorboards and the wall. A small patch of the floor was dark and soggy-looking.

"Bugger. Now what? Do you think an Impervious Charm'll hold it until I've spoken to the landlady?"

"I think you'd better try. I don't think it's a crack in the tank, I think the water pipe into the cistern might be the problem. Try an Impervious, and then a drying charm on the wall and floor. We can check it again after we've had that cup of tea – "

"Ow! Shit!" Harry straightened up too fast and hit his head on the little shelf above the toilet. "Ow! The tea - !"

He shot out of the bathroom, to find the kitchen full of steam and the kettle bubbling over onto a nearly-doused hob.

"I'm starting to hate this flat," he grumbled, as he flung the kitchen window open and found a potholder to grab the kettle with.

xXx

Mrs. Mudgeonly strongly hinted that she thought Ron or Harry had done something to the cistern that had caused the problem, and that it therefore merited less than her prompt attention. Fortunately for everyone, she didn't go further than hinting at this; largely because Harry hinted that he was on the verge of reminiscing about the warding incident, and no one really wanted to revisit that, least of all Mrs. Mudgeonly.

So the leak got sorted out promptly, and in the interests of good neighbourliness Ron prodded Harry into popping a box of chocolates and a note of apology into the owlbox of the neighbour who had been flooded out.

And thus peace returned to the Potter-Weasley household, for all of three days, which was how long it took for the Floo to develop a fault which sent Ron's robe, jumper and trousers to the Ministry without him one morning, when he was already running late for an important team meeting.

Floo connections were the responsibility of the tenant, not the landlady, so Harry went to speak to the happy engineers of the Floo Regulation Panel, while Ron got dressed for the second time that morning and Apparated himself to his meeting in a very flustered state of mind. It had to be said that Harry didn't feel very optimistic about his chances with the Floo engineers; this was not the first time something like this had happened (Ron had lost a robe in a very similar incident when they first moved into the flat), and consequently he was expecting them to tell him that the problem was not primarily with the Floo but with the chimney, which – of course – _was_ the landlady's responsibility. Nor was he disappointed.

No one could claim that Harry was someone who shrank from a fight. All the same, he didn't actually enjoy quarrelling with people and he didn't generally go out of his way to provoke altercations; it was more his style to wait for the fight to come to him. So having to go back to Mrs. Mudgeonly with yet another problem, which she would most likely dispute was anything to do with her, was something he could only view with misgiving.

He wasn't disappointed on that front either.

The upshot was a noisy dispute between the two of them which resulted in: Ron's clothes being retrieved from the chimney, with prejudice; Harry and Ron being accused of using Ron's clothes to wilfully damage the chimney, possibly with the intention of negotiating a reduction in their rent; the Floo engineers being summoned to confirm that there was nothing, in fact, amiss with the chimney _or_ the Floo point; the Floo engineers flatly refusing to get involved in a dispute involving a witch in a large pink wig and the Boy Who Killed You-Know-Who; said pink wig accidentally being Animated in a burst of frustration and running off down the street, to the joy of several local Muggle teenagers; officials from the Department of Accidental Magic being summoned to Obliviate the Muggle teenagers and retrieve the rampaging wig; and Mrs. Mudgeonly hyperventilating and giving Harry and Ron one month's notice to vacate the flat.

"So, to sum up: not a bad day's work," Ron observed wryly, when the whole story was related to him that evening.

"I got your clothes back," Harry offered glumly, having exhausted all his rage and indignation at the Ministry long before Ron got home. He'd been fined for the wig part of the incident, which, once he'd calmed down, he had to admit was fair. He didn't have the excuse of being thirteen or ill for his lapses anymore.

"Appreciated. Although I'd like to know why it's always my clobber this stuff happens to, and not yours." But this was softened by a broad grin, and he dragged the rather defeated-looking Harry into a comforting hug. "You're not having a good week, are you, mate?"

"No," Harry said petulantly into his shoulder, clinging just a bit. Ron's hugs were the best, after all. "Ron …"

"Yeah?"

"We've got to find a new place to live."

"I heard an ugly rumour to that effect," Ron agreed, with a sigh. "But let's look on the bright side – maybe we can get a bigger bathtub."

"And a loo that doesn't leak."

"And a place to dry our own laundry."

"And a Floo that doesn't eat your clothes."

"I don't think that's a lot to ask," Ron mused. There was a comfortable silence for a moment or two before he added, "Wish I'd seen her wig take off, though. I always miss the good bits."

Harry snorted a laugh. "I'll stick it in my pensieve for you later."

xXx

"So I've looked at a bunch of different flats," Harry related, a week later, "and for the money we're currently paying, most of them are places I wouldn't want to breed puffskeins in. Without taking on a pretty big hike in the rent, I can't see anywhere that's worth it, but I can't put that on Ron – I mean, I could take the hit, but he hates me paying for everything and it'll just stress him out. But on the other hand, we'll have nowhere to live in three weeks' time."

"Difficult." Remus Lupin put a mug a tea in front of Harry, and took a seat on the opposite side of the kitchen table. He gave Harry a knowing look as he doctored his own tea with several spoonfuls of sugar. "Don't think I haven't noticed that you deliberately avoided having this conversation with Sirius, by the way."

"He'll just offer us a set of rooms here," Harry said. "No offence, Remus, but – no."

The corner of Remus's mouth twitched. "I know!"

"They get into everything! And they follow me around!"

"Well, yes. But that's because you act like a spooked cat, Harry! The more you try to avoid them, the more they want to know _why_. You’re a very interesting person!"

"No, I'm not," Harry grumbled.

Remus chuckled. He stirred his tea for a moment or two, then gave Harry a more thoughtful look. "It's just a suggestion, but your mum house-shared with three of her friends when she left school. It made a bigger property more achievable. Have you thought about something like that?"

"I don't have those kinds of friends," Harry said dryly.

Remus resisted pointing out the wide spread of acquaintance Harry possessed, knowing that his godson would only deny that they were his 'friends', despite all evidence to the contrary. "You might not, but Ron does," he said instead. "He shared a dorm with Seamus Finnegan and that Muggleborn lad – Dean? Perhaps they'd be interested. And I'm sure Neville Longbottom would leap at the chance."

"Yeah, but would his Gran?"

They grinned at each other. Then Harry made a face.

"The thing is … we've sort of got used to it being just the two of us," he said, but when he shot his godfather a quick look, Remus's expression was sympathetic. "I reckon they might have a bit of a problem with it, you know?"

"Well they might or they might not – you'd be surprised. But I take your point." Remus considered the matter. "Of course, there's one avenue you haven't mentioned, which I would think would be the obvious solution." He smiled at Harry's questioning look. "You could try asking your trustees whether they'd be willing to let you move into the Rose House early."

Harry blinked. "You think they'd go for that?" he asked doubtfully.

"Like I said – you'd be surprised. At least sound out Mr. Pettifer and Mo MacDuff."

"Not Dumbledore?"

"I'd save him for last," Remus advised, "and let Pettifer deal with him if necessary. He does tend to look at these things rather obliquely – he was the main hold-out to Sirius and I taking you in when you were a boy, you know. But to be honest, I doubt even he would have a problem with you living in your family home. It might have been different if you'd wanted to do so when you left school, but at this point I can't imagine what objection he could have. The two of you have been managing nicely thus far, and with far less."

"I was thinking the other day that it'd be handy if I could use the workrooms there," Harry admitted.

"Is there more than one, then? I'm familiar with the more public parts of the house, of course, but I know there must be a lot of it that Sirius and I never saw. I don't even remember your father mentioning workrooms, although it stands to reason that there would be at least one."

"There's a basic one behind the study, and a medium-warded one in the basement," Harry said. He took a sip of his tea, thinking about the different hidden rooms in the Rose House. For all that it looked like a cosy, if extremely elegant, family home, it held just as many secrets as Black Manor. "And there's a tight-warded one under the herb-garden."

Remus blinked. "Really? Wait, what am I saying? Of course there is. I don't know why, but it always comes as a surprise to me to find that your family were just as secretive as all the other First Families."

Harry gave him a crooked grin. "It's that nice aura of respectability they all had!"

"Something like that!"

"Cedar Lodge is the same, according to Mr. Pettifer. He reckons it had something to do with one of the pre-Grindelwald dark lords, who did or said something that made people with money and power a bit paranoid about their studies. Anyway, it's not just a workroom under the herb garden – it's a whole suite of rooms, and three of them are libraries. One of them's got a really nice couch."

"Makes sense." Remus couldn't quite suppress a burst of enthusiasm at the thought of hidden libraries.

Harry grinned at him. "Want to take a look sometime?"

"Only if you're comfortable with me seeing them. They were hidden for a reason, after all."

"Honestly, I reckon I can trust you not to change all the wards and sell off the contents. I just need to work out how to get back in there." He made a wry face. "I got in last time because Grandpapa's portrait told me how, but it's a total pain in the arse and from something he said, I'm pretty sure there's another, easier way to get in. I've just got to find it."

"And he's not helping? That doesn't sound like Henry."

Harry shrugged. "All the portraits are like that. To be honest, I was surprised he said anything at all. They talked to me a bit when I was ill, but that was mostly if I looked like I was about to fall on my face and needed help. The rest of the time they just faff about and act like they don't know I'm watching." He ran a finger around the lip of his mug. "Anyway, that's the workrooms. There's a stellar observatory in the roof as well, did you know?"

"No, although I do remember James mentioning a telescope in the attic."

"Yeah, it's a whopper. Almost as big as the one in the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts. And there's a really nice couch in there too."

"Someone in your family liked their creature comforts," Remus agreed, amused. "Anyway, if finding a way into the workroom is a problem, I have the perfect solution for you. We'll take Venus to the Rose House and tell her that there's a hidden room in there somewhere that she's absolutely _not_ allowed to go inside. I guarantee she'll find the door and have it open within half an hour."

Harry snorted a laugh. "Right. And that doesn't piss you off at all!"

"Well … having to change the wards on some of the rooms every five minutes does get a bit wearing after a while," Remus admitted. "She can tell if something's covered by an illusion as well, if it's strong enough."

" _I_ can do that," Harry said curiously. "People keep telling me it's a rare thing, but Venus does all this stuff – "

"Yes, but Venus is a small child, and many children can spontaneously do remarkable things with magic," Remus said, smiling. "What they can do at that age _can_ be an indication of their abilities later – and that was certainly the case with you – but it's not reliable. Look at Neville Longbottom. By all accounts, he didn't show the slightest sign of magic until just before he got his Hogwarts letter, but he passed his NEWTS within the usual comfortable range of grades. On the other hand, I've heard of people who showed enormous promise in childhood, but were only mediocre wizards and witches later in life. A lot of factors go into it." He drained his own mug. "Since Venus is currently the most exhausting prodigy imaginable, Sirius and I will happily loan her to you and Ron for the purpose of locating all the hidden things in your house when you move in. Including the things you least want her to find."

"Thanks, but I still think I'll pass," Harry said dryly. "You don't get me to baby-sit that easily!"

"Can't blame a man for trying!"

"I think you'll find I _can!_ Besides, we haven't moved into the Rose House yet."

Remus raised his eyebrows. "But you're thinking about it."

"Yeah," Harry admitted. "P'raps I'll run it past Ron tonight, and see what he thinks. It's an idea."

"Especially as your alternative options are rapidly dwindling to Molly's attic room," Remus noted, and he grinned at Harry's exaggerated shudder.

xXx

The upshot of this conversation was Harry luring Ron to the Rose House for a visit one afternoon, in order to try and make a case for asking his trustees' permission for them to take up residence there. Exactly why he felt he _needed_ to make such a case for it was somewhat unclear, as Ron was already quite familiar with the house, but Harry had an obscure feeling that broaching the subject with him would be more successful if they were actually on site.

And Ron certainly had no objection to visiting, or indeed to the plan in question, but intimate familiarity with Harry and his sometimes labyrinthine reasoning led Ron to let him do things his own way, as his methods were often as much about soothing his anxieties as they were about the main objective.

After rambling around the house for a while, taking a look in on the two workrooms that Harry could confidently get into without a lot of aggravation, they ended up in the study. Ron jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and regarded the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, elegant elf-weave rugs, and imposing portraits with what he hoped was suitable gravity. It was an effort; for some reason, the study at the Rose House always inspired a weird mixture of awe and hilarity in him. He thought it might have something to do with the portraits, to be honest – several of them seemed to delight in waiting until Harry's back was turned to do absurd things, then leaping hastily out of the frame or assuming a sober mien the moment he showed signs of turning back in their direction.

"Don't take this the wrong way, mate," he said, "but you always look really out of place in this room."

"Good," Harry said emphatically. "The day I fit in with the people who built this place is the day I chuck myself in the impluvium."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ron could see a photograph of James Potter on the mantelpiece. He was rolling his eyes. Ron bit his lip for a moment to control himself, and said mildly, "I dunno what good you think that'll do. It's only about a foot deep."

Harry stared at him. "Eh?"

"The impluvium. It's only about a foot deep, so the best you'll be able to do is lie face down in it and snort a bit. Unless you mean that thing at the bottom of the main lawn? Because that's a ha-ha."

"Do what?"

"The little wall with the ditch below it. It's called a ha-ha."

Harry's lips began to twitch in a reluctant grin. "Your education's showing, Weasley. Tuck it away!"

"Yeah, and you don't want to know where I learned that!" Ron chuckled. "Seriously – you really want us to move in here?"

Harry pointed a finger at the floor. "Two words, Ron – _paid for._ "

Some of the portraits looked at little offended by this exceptionally practical view, but Ron could see Harry's grandfather Henry twinkling at him in a very Dumbledore-like way over Harry's shoulder.

"Pretty sure it's good for more than that," Ron said, keeping a straight face with difficulty.

"No landlady."

 _Yeah, but we'd be swapping her for Maffy,_ Ron thought, but he didn't say it. You mocked Harry's nurse-elf at your peril.

"Two words, then – smoking jacket," he said instead, and Harry blinked at him.

"You what?"

Ron nodded to one of the portraits to one side of Harry, who turned just quickly enough to catch his great-great-grandfather Raphael posing in a purple velvet smoking jacket and matching fringed cap, and ostentatiously smoking a hubble-bubble pipe. Caught out, Raphael cast a look of indignant injury at Ron.

"I'll buy you one," Ron said, grinning. "It'll help you fit right in."

Harry snorted, amused. "Yeah, right. I take anything that contrary old hippogriff does with a pinch of salt!"

Raphael's expression turned to one of outrage.

"Rude!" Ron tutted, the more amused by Harry's patent lack of awareness of the irony of him accusing anyone else of being _contrary_.

"He'd say the same about me."

Which was undoubtedly true, from what Ron had heard about Raphael Potter.

Harry wandered over to the fireplace. "You don't fancy the idea of living here then?"

"It'd be a challenge, but I'd make an effort to get used to living in the lap of luxury." Ron smirked at him. "But it's not me you have to persuade, is it? You reckon your trustees'll go for it?"

"Can't see why not. I mean, everyone seems desperate for me to show some sign that I'm a _real Potter_ – whatever that means – so I'm sure it'd make them happy if I started playing lord of the manor here. Besides, just about everyone except Remus hated it when we got the flat, so they ought to be happy we're moving out. " Harry ran his hand idly over the mantelpiece and something clinked.

Frowning, he repeated the action and suddenly held up a large, ornate key that Ron was ready to swear hadn't been there a minute before.

"Huh. I wonder what this – "

With a faint _pop_ , Harry disappeared.

Ron felt a distinct lurch in the region of his liver. "Harry?"

Nothing. Not even a swirl of dust in the mellow afternoon sunlight that poured through the long windows. He looked around frantically, hoping for some kind of help or guidance from the portraits.

All of the frames were empty.

"HARRY!"

xXx

"He did what?" Sirius blinked at Ron from the fireplace, where his disembodied head rested in a small patch of green flames.

"He disappeared!" Ron was nearly tearing his hair out, and behind him was a tiny phalanx of hand-wringing house-elves, not one of whom had been able to explain what had happened to their master in this supposedly safe house. Maffy was in tears. "There was a thing on the mantelpiece – an invisible key – "

"If it was invisible, how do you know it was a key?"

"Because it stopped being invisible when he picked it up! And then he just disappeared – I think it was a portkey."

"Sounds like something Prongs would have set up. Because it's a joke, see? A port- _key_." Sirius was maddeningly calm. "Look, have you asked the portraits about it?"

"No, because they all disappeared too!"

Sirius's expression was very still for a moment. "All right, stand back. I'm coming through." And his head disappeared from the fireplace.

"Thank you!" Ron snapped at the empty grate. _"At last."_

Then the flames roared up again and Sirius stepped out of the fireplace, carrying his two-year-old daughter Venus with her face tucked into his waistcoat to protect her from soot and hot ashes. He set her down on the hearthrug. "Poppet, you hold Daddy's hand. I don't need you disappearing as well."

"I should have called the Aurors," Ron said angrily, too worked up to moderate his tone, but Sirius was unmoved.

"They'd only ask you the same questions I'm asking. This house is well warded, so I doubt he's been snatched by someone. It's most likely an old portkey to a friend of the family." Sirius was looking around at the empty portrait frames. "This is odd, though."

"You think?"

Sirius gave Ron a look that warned him to get a grip on his tongue, if not his temper.

"Have you checked the others in the house?"

"The elves did. They're all the same. If the people in them are hiding behind the frames, they're not letting on."

"Well, they can only go to other portraits of them," Sirius reminded him patiently. "So Harry probably has ended up at someone else's house. Have you tried Floo-calling Mr. Pettifer?"

"No, I was going to try him next."

Sirius took a handful of Floo powder out of an ornate box on the mantelpiece and threw it into the fire. "Cedar Lodge!"

But Mr. Pettifer was not at home, and his granddaughter confirmed that Harry had not arrived there. Sirius left a message for him and closed the call. Frowning for a moment, he tried Professor Dumbledore at Hogwarts next. Then the Zabini household. Then the Bellecoeurs. Then Morag MacDuff. The Bones household. The Criggles. The Goldsteins.

House after house, a veritable laundry list of First Families who might feasibly possess portkeys to the Rose House or portraits and photographs of its long-dead masters and mistresses.

Not one of them had seen Harry Potter.

xXx

Landing unexpectedly in a strange house was pretty high on Harry's list of least-favourite things. In his experience, this kind of thing never ended well for him. Landing in what seemed to be someone's wardrobe was just adding insult to injury.

Harry panicked at suddenly being plunged into a darkness that was full of suffocating layers of cloth and reeked of old lavender and mothballs, and flailed out frantically with his hands. One struck something hard and wooden-feeling that made a muffled bang, and just as abruptly a door popped open, spilling him out onto a faded carpet.

In a flash he had his wand out of his sleeve and was crawling backwards across the floor, nearly hyperventilating in fright. For a couple of minutes he was conscious of nothing beyond his own noisy, panicked breathing and the stillness and silence beyond him. Only when nothing happened and no one appeared to confront him did he cautiously lower his wand a little and look around himself properly.

The room he was in appeared to be some kind of lady's sitting room, or dressing room perhaps; besides the truly immense wardrobe that Harry had fallen out of, there was an elegant chaise-longe, a sizeable dressing table laid out neatly with an array of elegant toiletry articles, a couple of dainty footstools that matched the chaise-longe, a full-length mirror draped over with a lace shawl, a chest of drawers and some cupboards, and a folding dressing screen. Somewhere in the room, a clock was ticking quietly.

The walls were papered in an old-fashioned cream colour sprigged with tiny flowers, and the carpet beneath his hands was a deep rose pink, also with a pattern of little sprigs of flowers. The pile was thick and deep. Nothing so odd about that, but Harry was immediately conscious of a difference; he'd spent enough time sitting on the rugs at Hogwarts, Black Manor, Cedar Lodge, and even the Rose House, to recognise that this one felt different … and yet vaguely familiar in a distant way.

There were large, deep windows to either side of the dressing table, with rose velvet curtains pulled back in swags and dense lace curtains against the old-style wooden sash window frames. Light was filtering into the room in a muted way, casting deep shadows.

Directly opposite the windows was a door; there was another to one side of the chest of drawers on one side of the room, and a third on the other, beyond the chaise-longe. The doors, and all the other woodwork, were painted a cream colour, which was unusual to his eyes; most of the houses Harry was familiar with had polished or varnished woodwork, which wizards seemed to prefer. The doorknobs – door _knobs_ , not latches or levers – appeared to be made of decorated ceramic.

Tense and anxious, Harry slowly got to his feet. When he looked at the wardrobe, the door was still ajar to reveal a glimpse of the garments within; a stiff, satiny-looking piece of a long dress was sticking out, its vintage green colour clashing brutally with the dainty pinkness of the room's furnishings. A woman's shoe had fallen out onto the floor as well, which Harry stooped to pick up. It was made of shiny patent leather in vivid blue, with a painfully high chunky heel, rounded toe and a large, stiff blue velvet bow pinned on with a silver and diamante buckle.

Harry could imagine a number of older witches of his acquaintance who would happily wear a pair of shoes like this, but when he turned it over in his hands he could tell that it was factory-made and indeed it had the name of the maker printed on the insole. It also showed unmistakable signs of age.

He put the shoe back inside the wardrobe. It occurred to him that falling out of a wardrobe into an unknown place was a classic fantasy trope. At his Muggle primary school they had read the book about children finding another world inside a wardrobe … but this was no Narnia.

Although now that Harry thought about it, this place _was_ giving off a very Muggle vibe.

On the bottom of the wardrobe, next to the shoe's twin, was the key that he had found on the mantelpiece at the Rose House. Clearly it was a portkey; eyeing it untrustingly, Harry flicked it out onto the carpet with the tip of his wand. Most portkeys were two-way, but given that he had no idea where it had deposited him, he wasn't ready to risk picking it up again until he knew what was going on.

Then he looked around again and went over to the nearest window.

When he lifted the lace curtain, the view wasn't enlightening other than to suggest that he had been dropped into another manor house. Below the window was a wide gravel terrace, beyond which the ground dropped away steeply to a broad lawn ringed by trees. Beyond the trees he got the vague impression of a rolling rural landscape, but he recognised at once the diversional effect of an Unplottable Charm.

Frowning, Harry let the curtain drop and turned back to the dressing table. The surface was laid out, semi-neatly, with the kind of clutter that he personally had no use for – hairbrushes, combs, a hand-mirror, nail scissors and files, trinket boxes, crystal scent bottles, nail polishes, a very decorative lipstick case. There was what he assumed was a jewellery box to one side, and a small ornate clock with some kind of spinning mechanism visible inside. A china hand wore multiple glittering rings. A cut-crystal dish held an odd assortment of earrings, tie-pins, brooches and cufflinks. There was a glass ashtray, a box of Players cigarettes, and a strange ornamental thing that was probably a lighter.

There was also a photograph in a mother-of-pearl frame. Harry picked it up.

It was an old-style Muggle photograph, monochrome and unmoving, of a man and woman. The woman, small but with attitude in every line of her posture, was dressed in what Harry judged to be 1950s chic. The man, not much taller than her, was an unexpectedly familiar, dapper figure in a very nattily-cut double-breasted suit jacket and trousers.

And Harry recognised him because only ten minutes ago he'd passed by his portrait multiple times as he walked up and down the length of the study at the Rose House. This was his great-grandfather, Edmund Potter.

Which was surely impossible. Who was this woman with him and why were they both dressed like Muggles? Harry had seen pictures of his great-grandmother, and she looked nothing like this woman. But there was no denying that the pose of the couple – more vividly captured by a still Muggle photograph than in a wizard photo where the subjects would have been moving around at will – was decidedly … couple-ish.

Deeply frustrated by the growing mystery, Harry set the photograph down again and eyed the doors speculatively. Upon cautious investigation, he found that the one beside the chest of drawers led into a nicely-appointed bathroom. The one behind the chaise-longe opened into a bedroom that was decidedly more Muggle than magical in its style.

The third door led, as he expected, out into a passageway, with windows opposite it overlooking a decorative courtyard, more doors leading down the corridor on his side, and at the end a landing and staircase. The house seemed to be very quiet and still, with no hint of any occupants.

The question was, how to proceed? Should he continue to be cautious? Or – and Harry admitted to himself that this was his cranky temper speaking – should he simply walk out into the main part of the house without attempting subterfuge, and see what happened? After all, it wasn't his fault that he'd been dumped here without warning. He could at least attempt to explain the situation to any putative residents.

And if this turned out to be a false step, well – he was a reasonably smart wizard with some unusually sharp defensive moves. It also occurred to him that there was the portkey. Fishing in a pocket, he found a handkerchief and used it to gingerly pick up the key and wrap it against any accidental skin contact until he was ready to use it again. He put it in his pocket, held his wand ready but relaxed at his side, and stepped boldly out into the passage.

The house really was quite eerily quiet. It was immaculately kept, not a speck of dust or dirty pane of glass anywhere, but it also felt unlived-in. Resisting the impulse to check behind every door he passed, Harry walked briskly down the passage and out onto the landing. Another passage stretched beyond this, but the stairs were wide and spiralled downwards to a tiled hallway.

Taking a deep breath, Harry walked quickly down the stairs. He half-expected to emerge into an ornate entrance hall like the one at Black Manor, but he quickly saw that this house was like the Rose House and Cedar Lodge, more Elizabethan in its design, with an entrance somewhere off to the side. There the similarities ended, and despite appearances it was probably much more recent in age. There were long windows letting in plenty of light, however, and it was pleasant enough.

Harry was growing impatient of this adventure though. He could spend all day walking around a house of this size and quite possibly get lost in the process. Time to be proactive.

"Hello?" he called, raising his voice above what he would normally use indoors. "Anyone about?"

Harry sighed. Much as he wanted to know where the devil he'd ended up, he wasn't about to keep wandering aimlessly around if there was no one in. Better to see if the portkey took him home again, or even try Apparating there, and perhaps come back at a later date with Ron and maybe Sirius or Remus. There was no rush after all. The idea that this was a Death Eater's lair was laughable.

On the other hand, there was the mystery of that photograph of his great-grandfather. And he rather suspected that everyone would look askance at him if he went home without trying to find out at least _something_ about the owners of the house. Or even the name of the place.

Perhaps there was a study somewhere.

It took about a quarter of an hour of wandering around the ground floor, in and out of the sitting room, dining room, and a small library, before Harry found the study – and hit the jackpot. For the moment he walked into the room, it was like walking into another house entirely.

Rather like walking into the Rose House, in fact.

For the study was undoubtedly a _wizard's_ room. Harry could feel the magical residue the moment he stepped across the threshold, and then he saw the portrait frames on the walls. There weren't nearly so many here as there were at the Rose House, but the occupants had managed to cram themselves into them somehow, and yes, it was quite obvious that these were the actual portraits from the Rose House, all of whom had clearly followed him here. Harry planted his hands on his hips and regarded them all with exasperation.

His father James was smirking at him like he'd done something clever, and Henry Potter was giving him a familiar look of affectionate amusement over the top of his spectacles.

"I don't suppose one of you'd like to tell me where the hell I am?" Harry asked them, not really expecting a reply. Which was just as well because, as usual, they had nothing to say to him. "You know it's a bit fucked up that you never speak to me unless I'm about to kick the bucket, right?"

James gave him what could best be described as a Gallic shrug and a smile.

Harry sighed, and looked around. There was a nice little writing desk standing in the window, so he went to take a look.

On it was a neat ebony desk set with an inkwell and Muggle-style pens, a broad blotter pad, some correspondence stacked in an ebony tray with a carved jade paperweight in the shape of Buddha holding them in place, and more photo frames containing Muggle photographs. One of them was another photograph of Edmund Potter, this time wearing a startling pair of baggy knee-length tweed trousers and an Argyle jumper, playing golf. _Playing golf!_ He even had a flat tweedy cap on his head and long Argyle socks.

Harry blinked at it. After a moment of blank staring, he picked up another photograph. For a moment he thought it was an unusually good-looking young man in the picture – then he realised it was a woman dressed in a man's suit, sitting on a stone garden bench with one leg casually crossed over the other in a consciously masculine manner. Her hair was slicked back to mimic a masculine style, and she had one elbow propped on the back of the bench, while her other hand dangled casually over the arm of the bench with a cigarette held laxly between two fingers. When Harry looked more closely, he realised it was the woman from the photograph upstairs.

Well. That was … different.

The next photograph was of the two of them again, the woman and his great-grandfather, both dressed in suits this time and standing arm in arm in front of the fireplace in the book room. The woman appeared to have a thin, dark moustache painted on her upper lip. A fourth photograph was of the woman on her own, this time in much more casual clothes although still very male in style, with an artist's smock over the top. She was sitting in front of a potter's wheel and shaping a lump of clay; the room she was sitting in looked like some kind of studio or workshop.

Harry shook his head and put the photo frame back in its place on the desk. Who the devil was she, and what was the connection with Edmund Potter?

He investigated the contents of the document tray. Most of it was correspondence addressed to _Mrs. C. Foston-Potter_ , but he found one letter, written on some headed parchment that he recognised only too well, with the Potter family crest at the top and _Rose House_ printed in green underneath. The neat, ornate hand that wrote this letter addressed it to _My darling Cicely_ and finished _Your adoring husband, Eddie_.

Eddie. On headed paper from Harry's family home. Edmund?

Harry's great-grandmother had been named Antonia. No one had ever mentioned someone called Cicely to him.

He put the letter back in the tray and was about to investigate the desk's drawers when there was a _pop_ and he looked up, wand at the ready. To his astonishment, there was an elderly female house-elf standing just inside the door, peering back at him in surprise.

"Is that you, Master James?" she asked in a quavering voice.

It took a moment for Harry to find his voice. "No, I – I'm his son. I'm Harry."

This seemed to take a few moments to sink in. Then she gasped, clasping her hands before her. "You is the little master! And you is all growed up now!"

xXx

"A portkey?" Remus Lupin repeated when he arrived, dismayed. "Oh Merlin. A hidden portkey in _this_ house could go anywhere."

Understandably, this was less than reassuring to Ron. "What do you mean, _anywhere?_ "

"Well, Henry had friends all over Europe and beyond, and _his_ father was supposed to have been a great traveller. You don't do intercontinental travel by Floo or Apparition." Remus looked at Sirius, and reached out to take Venus, who was becoming anxious at the tension around her. "Here, let me. Come to Uncle Moony, sweetheart, it's all right."

Sirius handed her over without argument, and rubbed his hands over his face. "I've tried everyone I can think of, and I'm coming up blank. The d-dashed thing was _invisible_ , Moony. I find it hard to believe that Henry, of all people, would leave a portkey loose on the mantelpiece where it could do something like this. I can't imagine him having a invisible portkey in the first place!"

"Sounds more like something James would do," Remus said levelly. "It's a long shot, but is it worth checking out the old Evans house? I know he had a portkey to Lily's people, because they couldn't have a Floo point installed. And it might be worth going to that old flat in Dundee Lily shared with Mo and the others, too."

Sirius made a face. "It's not likely on the face of it, but …" He sighed. "Let's cover all bases. Moody will only blast my bol – my buttocks off if I don't check."

Remus's eyebrows went up. "You're planning to call in Moody?"

"Him or Tonks, maybe Shacklebolt - they're the only ones I trust not to screw up a search. _If_ we can't find Harry first, that is." Sirius pulled his wand out. "Hold the fort here, I should be back in half an hour at most. And if he turns up before I get back – "

"I'll chuck him off the roof myself," Ron said, deeply stressed.

"That ought to learn him," Sirius agreed with a crooked grin, and he Disapparated.

When he was gone, Remus watched Ron's restless prowling for a few minutes, before making a decision. "It occurs to me …" Ron's head came up. "What about Harry's other relatives?"

Ron looked at him uncertainly. "The Dursleys?"

"Well, yes. I know it might seem like an even longer shot than Harry's grandparents' old house in Surrey, but Lily _did_ have some contact with Petunia. Not much, but it might explain why the portkey was so … innocuous and hidden."

Ron's expression lightened a little. "It's worth a look. And I'd just as soon have _something_ to do."

Which had been Remus's reason for suggesting it, but he kept that to himself. "Do you know where they live?"

"Yeah. Well, I mean I've never been inside, but I got Harry to show me the house after we left school, so I can Apparate there."

Which was a bit of luck, Remus thought. "Transfigure your robe into a Muggle coat first. And be very careful, Ron – we don't want trouble with the Ministry on top of everything else."

"No worries," Ron assured him, turning his plain brown robe into a short, scruffy denim jacket with "Chudley Cannons" picked out on the back in tarnished silver studs. "I'll knock on the door and ask if he's there, and hop it quick if he isn't."

"Petunia will likely shut the door in your face," Remus warned him.

"Maybe, but if he's actually there, then I reckon she'll want me to take him away, right?"

"Well … let's hope it's that simple."

"I'll be back in ten minutes at most, I reckon," Ron said, and he too Disapparated.

Remus sighed deeply, and looked at Venus. "It looks like it's you and me in charge, until Daddy and Ron get back. Shall we see if Maffy can find us a nice book to read, and perhaps a biscuit or two?" She nodded solemnly. "All right then, that's a plan."

xXx

The kitchen at the house was another Muggle anachronism. Harry was bemused at how – how _vintage_ at looked. He well remembered his aunt's assortment of Muggle machines and devices, from the washing machine and cooker, to the microwave oven, food processor and electric kettle. This kitchen was a big space and clearly had at some point been updated quite radically. _When_ that point might have been was something he couldn't work out. Probably not recently. He sort-of recognised the oven, hob and refrigerator, simply because there was nothing else they could have been, but for the most part the kitchen looked rather cold and alien, and Harry was pretty sure he would have felt that way about it even had he been a Muggle.

The two house-elves looked woefully out of place there, and it was plain that they didn't enter this room any more than they had to. The elderly female – Nillys – had brought Harry here because the kitchen was the traditional, central 'domain' of house-elves in wizard society, but she looked awkward and embarrassed about it.

The other elf was a male called Gill, who was probably about the same age as Nillys. He wasn't quite as overwhelmed by Harry as Nillys was, and when Harry asked, he was quick to disclaim any relationship on their parts with the house-elves at the Rose House. This reassured Harry a little, because he'd been fretting that the Rose House elves hadn't told him about this pair – or this house, for that matter – and he'd been horrified at the idea that these loyal creatures had been stranded here for many years, with no contact with the other house. But this, it turned out, was not precisely the case. Gill and Nillys were in no way related to the Rose House elves, and had been 'hired' quite separately.

"The old Master is asking us to look after this house," Gill explained to Harry, as Nillys disappeared somewhere to make tea. "He is giving us the office himself, specially." And he gestured proudly to his tea-towel-toga, which was indeed branded with the Potter family crest, just like the ones worn by Drooby and the other Rose House elves.

"That was my grandfather?" Harry asked, surprised and thinking of the photographs of his great-grandfather.

"Yes, young Master. He is bringing us here when the Mistress is old, to take care of her and her home."

"The Mistress?"

"Her who was his father's wife," Gill explained.

"That's the woman in the pictures – Cicely?"

"Yes, young Master." Gill leaned in and whispered, "Her is being … _a Muggle_ , young Master, and not going about in proper society like a witch."

"I see." Harry considered this. "And my father – Master James – knew about her?"

This Gill couldn't confirm. But James Potter had certainly known about the house, because he'd visited it briefly when his father died. It also turned out that he'd visited once more, just before he'd gone into hiding with his family, and assured Gill and Nillys that he would return to discuss what to do with the property, once everything was back to normal.

Except that he had never returned, and Harry now had to break the news to these faithful old retainers that his father had been dead for the better part of twenty years.

Gill bowed his head at this, and to Harry's surprise Nillys very gently took his hand and held it.

"We is very sorry, little Master," she whispered to him.

Their reactions were very different to the emotional responses of the Rose House elves, but then Harry supposed they hadn't known his family the way Maffy and Drooby and the others had. Nevertheless, they were sad – and, he guessed, anxious about what all this meant for them. It took some very careful questioning, but over the course of two cups of tea and a biscuit or five, Harry eventually got Gill to admit that James's parting words had worried the two of them for some time. Henry Potter had not hidden that he disliked the house and was reluctant to visit it, and James's initial reaction to it had been lukewarm to say the least. Gill and Nillys had been afraid that James would dispose of the house and give them clothes.

"Well, that's not going to happen," Harry told them both firmly. "I mean, I don't know about the house – and I can't do anything about it for a few years yet anyway – but I'm not going to give you clothes. Whatever happens, you'll have a place with me for the rest of your lives, or I'll find you somewhere else just as good. All right?"

They looked relieved. Which in itself was telling, because the merest hint of going _somewhere else_ would have driven any of the Rose House elves into a panic. Clearly, all Nillys and Gill wanted was a place in a wizard household.

"Right," Harry said, finishing his tea. "Would one of you be able to show me around a bit, just so I can get an idea of what the house and garden are like?" He smiled wryly. "And then I'll have to be getting home. Ron must be wondering what's happened to me."

xXx

Ron returned from the Dursley house, looking tight-mouthed and despondent.

"No sign of him," he confirmed, tossing the denim jacket over the arm of one of the couches. "And I reckon that aunt of his is psycho. She was so pissed off when I asked about him that I thought she might bite me or something."

"She hasn't changed much, then," Remus said ruefully.

Then Sirius appeared with a _pop!_ , to much acclaim from Venus, who was finding this whole adventure dreadfully dull. He didn't look any happier than Ron.

"Not a whisper of him," he said, picking his daughter up. "The Evans house is gone – the whole estate has been redeveloped. I tried a Tracer Charm for portkey energy, but not a sausage. Mind you, there's a really busy road there, so any magical energies would be dissipated pretty quickly, but there's no reason to assume he went there. And the house in Dundee was a bust too."

"So what do we do now?" Ron asked.

Sirius met Remus's eyes over Venus's head and saw his tiny nod. "We call in the Aurors," he said, handing her back to his partner. "I'll Floo-call Moody …"

But he was just reaching for the Floo powder when the flames in the hearth turned green and flared up. Seconds later, Mr. Pettifer stepped out onto the hearth, looking cool and collected.

Sirius was privately rather relieved to see him. "Ah, good – we've been trying to get hold of you, sir."

"I am aware," Mr. Pettifer said dryly. "Primrose's message reached me at the Ministry, by which time I had been stopped by no less than a half-dozen acquaintances who wished to know if I had heard that young Henry had disappeared and the Aurors were being called in."

"I was just going to Floo-call the Aurors," Sirius admitted. "But sir – "

"He _has_ gone missing!" Ron jumped in, agitated. "I'm sorry, sir, but he just vanished and he's been gone for a couple of hours now!"

"Indeed?" Pettifer looked mildly surprised. "How did this happen?"

"He seems to have picked up a portkey from the mantelpiece," Remus said, rather more calmly than the others.

"It was invisible until he picked it up, and then it turned into a key!" Ron put in.

"And the portraits all chose to beat a retreat, so there was no one to give us any idea of where it took Harry," Remus concluded. "The elves don't seem to know anything about it."

"I see." Mr. Pettifer looked around at all the empty frames and sighed. "Henry! Show yourself please."

Henry Potter's portrait remained empty, but there was a decided air of someone lurking just beyond the edge of the frame.

"Your sense of mischief hasn't changed in the least, I see," Pettifer said, annoyed. "This is very ill done of you, however. It will make much unnecessary gossip for your grandson, and I am at a loss to understand what you mean by it." He turned his back on the frame, shaking his head.

"I was on the verge of calling in Alastor Moody," Sirius commented, looking annoyed and exasperated.

"I'm glad you restrained yourself, dear boy. He would undoubtedly have insisted upon taking the study apart brick by brick, which would be decidedly inconvenient to say the least, and quite unnecessary besides."

"Unnecessary," Sirius repeated. He ran a hand over his hair, and drew in a calming breath. "Okay. I'll admit I'm glad to hear you say that, but I'd appreciate an explanation, sir."

"If he took the portkey on the mantelpiece, then Henry has gone to Upottery Manor," Pettifer said calmly.

"Where's Upottery Manor?" Ron demanded, bewildered.

"I believe its physical location is somewhere near Honiton," Pettifer replied. "Shall we have some tea? If Henry has been gone this long, then no doubt he is busy looking around. The portkey will bring him home again when he's ready."

"But what has this place got to do with Harry?" Sirius asked.

Mr. Pettifer gave him a narrow look, then turned to look at Remus and Ron, taking in the general tension. "Yes, tea would be a good idea, I think. Drooby!"

"Mr. Pettifer!"

"Yes, yes, I shall explain in a moment – "

There was a sharp _crack_ and the Rose House's butler-elf, Drooby, appeared. "Mr. Pettifer-sir is calling?" he said respectfully.

"Yes, indeed. Do you think your good fellows in the kitchen could provide us with some tea and cakes, Drooby? I think we all feel the need. And Mr. Henry will undoubtedly be home soon, and wanting refreshment."

When Drooby had gone about his task, Pettifer gestured to the couches in the middle of the room and they all went to sit down.

"Upottery Manor is part of the Potter estate," he explained without pre-amble. "It was purchased by Henry's great-grandfather in the early 1950s. Unfortunately, I'm unable to tell you much about it as I've never been there myself. Indeed, the only reason I recall its existence so readily is because it is listed as one of the estate's more unusual assets in the paperwork young Henry signed when he attained his magical majority. Henry the elder wasn't particularly fond of the house, and I believe he considered disposing of it at one time, but then he decided to wait and consult James when he grew up."

"I don't remember James mentioning any family property in Honiton," Sirius said, frowning.

"Well … possibly he only found out about it himself when Henry died," Pettifer admitted. "Henry had far greater matters on his mind by then, than obscure properties in the family's portfolio."

Remus was eyeing the fireplace thoughtfully. "You know, Harry _has_ been gone rather a while. Perhaps one of us should Floo over there and make sure he's all right."

"That was one of the reasons Henry the elder disliked Upottery Manor, I'm afraid. The house can only be accessed by that one portkey. There is no Floo access, and the Manor and grounds are heavily warded against Apparition by anyone but a family member." Mr. Pettifer looked pensive. "Henry disliked portkey travel very much in later life – he believed that his extensive travel by the medium in his earlier years had made his digestion sensitive to it. I must say that I myself have noticed a similar affliction in respect of Apparition now that I'm older."

"But why wouldn't there be a Floo point?" Ron asked, surprised.

Mr. Pettifer shook his head. "Gentlemen, I would like to satisfy your curiosity, but I know very little myself, and that little should be saved until Henry returns, when I feel sure he too will have a great many questions. Let us have our tea, and then hopefully he will join us and I can satisfy everyone."

On cue, the housekeeper-elf Dilly bustled in with one of her subordinates, each of them carrying a large tea tray, one with the tea service itself and the other with a selection of multi-layered cake-stands full of dainty little cakes and sandwiches. At this, Venus stirred in Remus's lap, peeping at the cakes with interest. Mr. Pettifer at once held out his arms to her.

"Venus, darling, come and sit with your old grandpapa and help me to choose a cake," he coaxed.

She was pleased to do so, but demanded, as soon as she was settled on the couch beside him: "Where's Harry?"

"Oh, he's visiting his other house," Pettifer told her comfortably. "He'll join us very soon, I'm sure. He likes cake almost as much as you and I do!"

Venus inspected the cake dishes carefully, before pointing to one. "That's cherry! Harry likes cherry."

This brought a smile to her father's face. "He does! You don't miss much, do you, flower?"

"No," she agreed. "That's Harry's cake and you can't have it, Daddy."

"That told you," Ron said to Sirius, with a fleeting grin, but his eyes strayed to the spot by the fireplace where his boyfriend had disappeared. "Wish he'd hurry up and come home to eat it."

"Which does rather beg the question …" Remus said, but he didn't finish the thought. He didn't have to.

"The property has an actual physical location, of course," Mr. Pettifer said, after a moment. He paused to accept an éclair from Venus. "Dearest, that one looks delicious, thank you! May I have a plate to put it on too? – I imagine there is a map in the deeds of the house. However, I am unsure if was made Unplottable. If that is the case, then going to the physical location will be pointless. As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, the house will, for all intents and purposes, not be there."

Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose. "Right. Well, it's what? Four-thirty now? We'll give it until six, then we'll have to try going there."

"And if we can't find it?" Ron asked, trying to keep calm and mostly failing.

"Then we shall have to consult those with greater experience and knowledge than ours," Mr. Pettifer said firmly. "But really – "

With a sharp _pop!_ Harry appeared on the hearthrug. He looked around at them. "Hullo, what are you all doing here?" His eyes went to the teapot and cake plates. "Is that a cherry cake? Brilliant!"

"You tosser!" Ron burst out, forgetting his company in the relief of his partner's reappearance. "Is that all you've got to say? You just disappeared for half the sodding afternoon! We had no idea if we could find you if anything was wrong!"

"You tosser, Harry!" Venus cried happily, waving to him.

Remus very quietly dropped his face into his palm.

xXx

"Did you know about the other house then, sir?" Harry asked Mr. Pettifer, when Ron had vented some of his anxiety and indignation (rather more cautiously) and Venus had been persuaded to stop repeating her new word. More tea had been poured and the cakes passed around, which helped.

"I did, dear boy, but only in the most abstract fashion. I know very few details of it," Mr. Pettifer admitted, apologetically. "Your great-grandfather, Edmund, purchased it some time in the early 1950s I believe. For reasons that were never explained to me, Upottery Manor was very heavily protected – the portkey you inadvertently discovered is the only means of access. Your grandfather disliked the house for some reason, and I believe he very rarely visited it. Indeed, he only mentioned it to me once or twice, and I distinctly remember him saying that he would like to dispose of it. He wanted to obtain your father's opinion first, however, and in the event he passed away before anything was done. I had forgotten all about the house until today."

"Huh." Harry munched his cherry cake pensively.

"Well?" Ron asked, exasperated. "Are you going to tell us about it, after all that?"

"I didn't do it deliberately, you know," Harry told him.

"Yeah, but you didn't hurry back either, did you!"

"And if I'd come back here right away and said _Hey, I landed in this Muggle wardrobe, but I scarpered without bothering to take a look around_ , you'd have been a bit hacked off with me too!"

"Yeah, but you could have come back and told us what was going on before you went back to take a look – "

"Oy!" Sirius said, annoyed. "Have the domestic later! Some of us want to know what actually happened!"

"Did you really land in a wardrobe?" Remus asked Harry quickly, before the arguments spiralled out of control. "Did you say a _Muggle_ wardrobe?"

"Well yeah," Harry said, "it's a Muggle house."

"Are you sure, Henry?" Mr. Pettifer asked, astonished.

"Pretty sure! Well … the study is more of a wizard room, and there's a couple of house-elves looking after the place, but – "

"House-elves?" Sirius repeated, and his eyebrows were nearly in his hairline.

"Yeah, just the two of them. Nothing to do with the elves here, they say that Grandpapa gave them the, er, tea-towel. If that's the right way to put it."

Mr. Pettifer looked up at Henry Potter's portrait behind the desk, and frowned when his late friend nodded and smiled at him cheerfully. "You are a wretch and a mischief-maker," he told the portrait severely. "I want nothing to do with you." And he turned back to Harry rather pointedly. "I'm afraid I don't understand, Henry. Will you explain, please?"

So Harry told them about landing in the wardrobe, making his way through the house, and finding the study. He told them about all the photographs of his great-grandfather and Cicely, and then meeting the house-elves and being shown around the house properly.

When he was finished, there was an astonished silence.

"Let me get this straight," Sirius said, with an indescribable look on his face. "Edmund Potter bought the house for his second wife."

"Impossible!" Mr. Pettifer said emphatically. "Forgive me, Henry, but I knew your great-grandfather quite well. He refused to marry again, after his wife Antonia passed away, and he was content living here with your grandparents. It would have been known had he even considered a second marriage, for he was considered quite an eligible party."

"Well, that's what the house-elves told me," Harry said, with a shrug. "And there's loads of photos of them in the house – Muggle photos that don't move. He liked to dress up in Muggle clothes and do Muggle things. It's obviously him, I mean anyone would recognise him, because he looks like me and Grandpapa and Dad. And she was a Muggle, the house-elves were certain of that." He paused, then decided _in for a penny, in for a pound._ "She liked to wear men's clothes, actually. Lot's of photos of her dressed up like a bloke, and she had two dressing rooms, one with women's clothes and one with men's. Like she saw herself as being two different people."

There was a strange pause, and he saw that whilst Ron was looking intrigued, and Remus wore his usual expression of calm interest, Sirius looked decidedly taken aback, and Mr. Pettifer was polishing his spectacles in a rather agitated way.

"Well," the latter said, and Harry felt sure he wasn't imagining the note of dismay in his elderly mentor's voice. "That - that is certainly not what I was expecting. Although I suppose it explains things somewhat ..."

"Is it a problem?" Harry asked, interested by the tension this revelation had created. "I mean, I know my Aunt Petunia used to throw nine kinds of fit about people doing that kind of stuff, but I usually take that as a pretty good sign. That she would have thrown a fit, I mean. It means it's something worth supporting, to be honest, and if women want to wear men's clothes or whatever, that's their business, right? I'll support that."

"Ah," Sirius said, unhelpfully, looking rather shaken by this. "Supporting. Right."

"That's certainly an interesting way of looking at things," Remus said, and the smile he suddenly gave Harry was distinctly wicked.

Bemused, Harry looked at Ron for help, only to see his shoulders shaking with laughter. "Okay, I don't get it. Is cross-dressing a problem for wizards and witches, then? Because I distinctly remember seeing an old fart in a woman's nightdress at the Quidditch World Cup, and no one seemed to have a problem with it except one of the stewards, and that was only because he thought the Muggles might notice and pitch a fit."

"I don't think it's the cross-dressing part, Harry," Remus said, and there was a definite note of laughter in his voice. "I think it's more the whole package – that your great-grandfather was sneaking off to play at being a Muggle with his illegal, cross-dressing, Muggle wife. That's … definitely something else."

"Illegal?" Harry said, startled.

"It's illegal for members of the First Families to marry Muggles," Remus explained.

"Seriously?" Harry looked at Mr. Pettifer. "But Dad married my mum – "

"Your mother was Muggle _born_ , dear boy," Mr. Pettifer pointed out. "She was a _witch_ , not a Muggle! A very different thing."

It was on the tip of Harry's tongue to say that he wasn't sure he agreed with that, but then he saw Ron grinning at him, as unperturbed as Remus, and gave him an enquiring look.

Ron shook his head. "Don't look at me, mate! It's another of those First Family things. The rest of us can marry Muggles if we want to, although some people do get their knickers in a knot about it."

"It explains a lot though," Remus said, in a reasonable tone. "He couldn't tell people about her, or be seen with her, so he had a separate house and lived a separate life with her. I wonder if her Muggle friends and relatives knew him?"

"This runs contrary to everything I know of him," Mr. Pettifer said, and he seemed genuinely distressed. "Utterly extraordinary … Edmund was one of our great legal minds, you know, and generally accounted one of the least radical Potters in generations. Such a thing I would expect of Raphael, not his son!"

"He was pretty adventurous though." Harry was having a hard time seeing any of this as something to be taken overly seriously, which made it difficult for him to drum up some sympathy for Mr. Pettifer's viewpoint. First Family conventions were something he had very little patience with at the best of times. "He liked to travel, didn't he? He was the one who bought shares in Swiss cheese. Maybe he met her while he was travelling."

Sirius seemed to be absorbing the surprise a little better. "Did she really dress up as a man?" he asked Harry.

"Yep. False moustache and everything."

"Huh. Never saw the attraction in it myself, but there were a couple of blokes at school who got caught wearing girls' underwear."

"Not like I know anything about it," Harry said, trying to keep a grip on the quiver in his voice, "but I _think_ that's a different sort of thing."

"Different's one word for it," Ron said dryly. "I'm more interested in why your granddad wanted to dress up like a Muggle."

"I'm not sure it was just dressing up," Harry said. "Looking at the photos – and the house – I'd say he liked pretending to be a Muggle generally, you know? There were pictures of them dressed to go to parties, it looked like. Since she obviously didn't go to wizard parties with him, they must have had some kind of Muggle social life together. There's a garage with a fancy car in it, actually. I wonder if he could drive?"

Mr. Pettifer made an inarticulate sound of protest.

"Perhaps," Remus suggested tactfully, "Edmund Potter saw it as being a very similar sort of interest that they shared – their need to dress up and be someone else. I can sort of see that, in a peripheral way. There have been times in my own life when I've needed to … reinvent myself, I suppose is the best way to put it. To escape my own life and temporarily become someone else, even a Muggle at one point."

Harry looked over his shoulder at the portrait of his great-grandfather, and saw that Edmund Potter was examining his fingernails on one hand with intense interest while the occupants of a number of other frames around the room directed exasperated and even disapproving looks at him. His wife, Harry's great-grandmother Antonia, was regarding him with fond amusement however. Some niggle of tension in Harry dissolved when he saw that.

"Well, anyway," he said, turning back to the others, "Grandpapa obviously knew all about it. And Dad knew about the house, because he went there a couple of times after Grandpapa died. Actually, that's a good point – didn't he mention the place to either of you?" he asked Sirius and Remus.

"No – but the Potter Estate is huge, by wizard standards," Sirius said. "He was still going through all the paperwork when he and Lily had to take you into hiding."

"Indeed," Mr. Pettifer agreed. "Full probate of Henry the elder's Will had still not been achieved when James died. Dumbledore, Miss MacDuff and myself had considerable trouble in putting matters in order for the purposes of the Trust. Dear me, yes – a very great deal of work. Please do not be thinking that is a criticism of James, however; merely a reflection of the work involved when any _paterfamilias_ passes away."

"Tell you what seems odd to me," Ron said, frowning. "If this Upottery Manor place is so well protected and hardly anyone knew about it, why didn't Harry's mum and dad go there when they had to go into hiding?"

Harry looked at him. "I was just wondering that too."

Sirius blew out a breath and shook his head. "It's anyone's guess at this point, but I'd say there were a few different factors involved, the first being that it's almost _too_ well hidden. The Order had to have some contact with Lily and James, and James was still doing Order work for the first month or so after they moved to Godric's Hollow. The fact that there's only one portkey that accesses this Manor would have been a problem – the security would have had to have been changed to allow other people in, and that would have taken a lot of work."

"And possibly even damaged the existing protections on it," Remus noted. "Also, it sounds like a very big house, and one of the reasons the Rose House wasn't given the added protection of the Fidelius Charm was because the bigger the building is, the more chance that the charm will lose some effectiveness. The house at Godric's Hollow was tiny, just two bedrooms."

"And it is entirely possible that James felt the same dislike of the house that his father did," Mr. Pettifer commented. He picked up his forgotten teacup and took a sip. "What did you think of it, Henry?"

"Don't think I thought anything about it, much," Harry admitted, but a grin began to appear. "Could be handy though."

"Handy how?" Ron demanded suspiciously.

Harry rolled his eyes. "In case you forgot, we're going to be homeless in three weeks' time!"

"Wait – what?" Sirius said, eyeing them sharply.

"Their landlady's given them notice," Remus told him, with a sigh. "And I didn't tell you because I knew Harry had a plan, and I didn't want you getting worked up about it prematurely."

"I do hope your landlady isn't being difficult again, Henry," Mr. Pettifer said sternly. He had been one of the people inadvertently involved in the first dispute they'd had with Mrs. Mudgeonly.

It was on the tip of Harry's tongue to say that 'difficult' wasn't the half of it, but then he remembered the fine he'd had to pay, and deflated a little. "I may have made a bit of trouble for her," he admitted.

"Give over!" Ron told him. "That business with her wig wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been giving you grief!"

"Yeah, but I can't just lose control and Animate people's wigs when they piss me off," Harry retorted. "It's antisocial!"

"I think the word you're looking for is 'illegal'," Sirius told him, but he looked amused.

"Whatever. But since I can't live here till I'm twenty-one, and I can't go and live in the summer house at Monte Carlo, because I'm not allowed to leave the country without the Wizengamot's permission until I'm twenty-one …" Harry shrugged, and smiled. "I'm guessing if nobody knows about Upottery Manor, I _could_ go and live there instead."

Remus laughed. "Yes, I suppose you could - it would certainly be peaceful, with no one else able to access it!"

Mr. Pettifer was polishing his spectacles again. "You could, Henry dear boy, but why you would feel the need to I can't imagine. If you wish to live in the Rose House now, all you have to do is ask. I believe I can speak for Miss MacDuff and Dumbledore in this matter, and for my own part I would be only too happy to see you residing in your ancestral home."

Harry grinned at him. "I was going to ask anyway, sir."

"Excellent! I shall speak to my fellow trustees at the first opportunity."

"So if we're going to live here," Ron said, eyeing him, "what are you going to do with the other place?"

The look Harry gave him was full of mischief. "I could give it to you for a wedding present," he offered. Then he remembered that his godfather was listening and pointed a threatening finger at him. "Don't read anything into that!"

"I wouldn't dream of it," Sirius said, grinning back at him.

"That's something else I can't do until I'm twenty-one," Harry grumbled. "Which is pretty unfair considering that most people can get married at seventeen."

"And First Family girls can still be married off at fifteen with the consent of their parents," Remus noted rather dryly.

"I think we can all agree that the state of matrimony in Wizard Britain is less than satisfactory," Mr. Pettifer agreed, "but as the Reform of Marriage Act has yet to pass successfully through the Wizengamot – "

"And probably won't until Harry's old enough to vote for it," Sirius added.

" – Perhaps it's just as well," Mr. Pettifer continued doggedly. "It would surely be more satisfactory if your wedding could actually be _called_ a wedding, Henry, rather than a handfasting."

"Yeah. Not that I'm saying I _will_ , but that'd be nice."

"Meanwhile, I'll just sit here and pretend it's nothing to do with me, shall I?" Ron asked him affably.

Harry laughed.

xXx

After everyone else had gone, Harry and Ron looked at each other.

"So you're going to give me that house as a wedding present," Ron said, trying to suppress a smile. "Just one question, mate – would I _want_ it?"

"If you like, we can portkey over and take a look," Harry offered. "I reckon we should take our brooms, though – it looks like it's got a big garden and I didn't get a chance to look at that earlier."

Ron snorted his amusement. "Maybe another day – I'm still trying to get my head around it all. What was your great-grandfather like! A secret Muggle life …"

"Of a sort," Harry said dryly. "You can't tell me he did without _everything_ magical. Well, obviously he didn't, since he was still living here at least part of the time. Bit of a rich person game - he just liked playing at it, the way that French queen liked pretending to be a shepherdess. But I sort of get it, all the same. The First Family stuff gets a bit much sometimes, even Mr. Pettifer admits that. Being able to duck out and go live with the non-magical wife, play golf, go to Muggle parties … it must have been a bit like taking a tight pair of shoes off."

"Someone agrees with you," Ron said with a grin, jerking his thumb at one of the portraits; Edmund Potter was nodding vigorously.

"How you didn't get caught out I'll never know," Harry said to him directly. "Sounds like Grandpapa was covering up for you!"

Henry Potter's portrait smiled at him ruefully.

"Anyway," Harry said, turning back to Ron. "Look at it this way: we've got a great place to hide if another Dark Lord decides to pop up, and I've got a brilliant title for my memoirs."

Ron's grin widened. "Go on then!"

" _My Cross-dressing, Muggle, Step-Great-Grandmother And Me_ ," Harry said with a grin.

Ron laughed outright. "Better hope she kept a diary! Changing the subject, though, mate, when are you planning to move in here?"

"As soon as Miss MacDuff and Professor Dumbledore say we can," Harry said.

"We'd better get packing, then. And I'll try and get a day off work to help move everything."

"Don't worry about that, once everything's packed moving it'll be no problem." Harry gave him a crooked grin. "I'll even make sure there's a hot bath waiting for you when you get home that day!"

Ron raised his eyebrows. "In a bathtub we don't have to expand?"

"Well, _yeah_ – have you seen the bathtub off the master bedroom? It's the size of a duck pond!"

Ron managed to muster up a stern frown. "Harry … did you magic Mrs. Mudgeonly's wig just to get us a bigger bath?"

Harry blinked at him for a moment, then gave him a sly grin. "If I did, you'll never know. And it was _totally_ worth it! Come on, I'll show you …"

**~ _finis_ ~**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Shocolate alerted me to a place called Upottery Manor, near Honiton (and Ottery St. Mary and Otterton – basically another place that could be near Ottery St. Catchpole), once owned by Viscount Sidmouth but sold off and demolished in the 1950s. Only clearly it wasn't demolished in the 1950s at all, but just made Unplottable by its new owner.
> 
> There was also a side venture into censuses, Prewetts and Pomeroys, but that's neither here nor there.
> 
> Music: I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but I generally have "theme tunes" for my stories, a particular piece of music that I was listening to when I was writing the story which, however inappropriate, tends to stick in my mind. A lot of them will be from movie soundtracks. So the theme tune of this particular fic is "Griet's Theme" from Girl With A Pearl Earring.


End file.
